Wade swore. “He’s taunting me now.”
Kent nudged her shoulder. “Go ahead and ask him about Chandra.”
After giving both profilers a long look, she made her next message short and to the point.
FBI: DID YOU KILL HER?
CIPHER: I HAVE ARRANGEMENTS TO MAKE. NO MORE TIME 4 TALK.
He would not respond to any further messages.
Nina pushed away from the keyboard. “He’s toying with us and wasting our time. He said the next one would die in four days. It’s already been three.”
“Which makes me wonder,” Kent said. “Why this new break in pattern? In the past, his clues have always led directly to a body.”
“It was a distraction,” Wade said. “He must need extra time to get the next victim lined up.”
Nina pictured the Cipher out in the streets, hunting. He had them chasing their tails while he was stalking another girl. Frustration gnawed at her.
“Each clue gets progressively more difficult,” Wade said. “The first was a rudimentary substitution cipher. The next operated on the same principle but added an extra layer of calculation and flipped part of the code. After that, we get a rhyming couplet, a complete departure for him. This time, he gives us something that seems to combine art and mathematics.”
“He’s showing off,” Kent said.
“I agree,” Buxton said. He had come up behind them. “I was following the direct messages. He’s jerking us around while he stages his next kill. We have all the manpower we need, what we are running out of is time. I’d like to brainstorm some ideas about how to proceed with the investigation now that we have a better handle on who we’re dealing with.” He swept his arm toward the massive space and the scores of personnel at their workstations. “We have resources, let’s use them.”
“Can we try another search for the Cipher’s biological parents?” Nina asked. “Did the Borr Project include prospective donors from around the world, throughout the US, or just in the DC area?”
“We don’t know,” Kent said. “There’s no way to continue the search.”
“We might get some new leads if we told the public about the Borr Project connection,” Breck said, joining their discussion. “But how much do we tell the public at this point in the investigation, if anything?”
Buxton looked like he needed an antacid. “I don’t want to release information about the Borr Project unless we absolutely have to.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Imagine how the bloggers and tweeters and conspiracy theorists would react. Rumors would run rampant about superpredators stalking young girls.” He shook his head. “And the other grown children from the project who are now perfectly normal adults could get a lot of blowback they don’t deserve.”
It was similar to what Dr. Borr’s son had told them, and she agreed but privately felt they were on borrowed time until the information leaked, especially now that various field office agents around the country had interviewed children of the Borr Project.
She was preparing to discuss this with the group when the lead cryptanalyst, Otto Goldstein, charged over to them, practically vibrating with intensity.
“Give me some good news about that picture puzzle,” Buxton said, a hint of desperation in his voice.
Goldstein beamed, his thick wire-rimmed glasses glinting under the fluorescent lights. “We solved it.”
Chapter 39
FBI Gulfstream jet
Somewhere over the Midwest
Nina sat next to Wade at the small table across from Kent and Buxton. Breck sat across the aisle, her laptop propped on a tray table unfolded from her armrest.
Buxton was pressing buttons on the in-flight television’s remote. “National news,” he mumbled, flicking through the channels until he found the one he wanted.
Nina recognized Amy Chen, the senior anchor. The crawl below her stated BREAKING NEWS. SCIENTIST CLAIMS MILLION DOLLAR REWARD.
“Next, we’ll hear from the scientist who cracked the code,” Chen said into the camera. “With me in studio is retired FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawna Jackson for an insider’s take on the progress of this high-stakes investigation. All this and more as we bring you continuing coverage, right after the break.”
“Shawna cleared everything with me before she agreed to go on,” Buxton said over the drone of a dishwashing detergent commercial. “Given what she did for us, I could hardly ask her not to talk.”
The network had contacted Shawna for comment an hour before when a scientist in California agreed to provide his solution to the Savannah puzzle in an exclusive live interview. Shawna had brokered a deal in which she agreed to discuss some of the particulars of the investigation in exchange for sitting on the story for an hour so Buxton and the Quantico team could get a head start toward the next destination. Buxton had asked Shawna to negotiate a twenty-four-hour hold, but the news channel had balked.
Chen was back on screen, Shawna sitting next to her.
“Before we speak to the former executive assistant director,” Chen began, “let’s hear from Dr. Charles Farnsworth, who studies spectroscopy in his California research lab.” The screen split to reveal a heavyset man with a receding hairline and bushy mustache. “Tell us, Dr. Farnsworth, how did you discover the meaning behind the clue, and what is the answer?”
Farnsworth’s cheeks grew ruddy as he stared blankly at the camera.
“Dr. Farnsworth?”
Nina recognized the signs of stage fright. The man had obviously just realized his fifteen minutes of fame were upon him, and he was nowhere near prepared.
Chen threw him a lifeline. “Perhaps you could tell us about your work first?”
Chen hadn’t made it to the top of her profession without learning how to coax a nervous interviewee.
Farnsworth appeared relieved. “I study the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation,” he said.
Chen looked like she was fighting a massive eye roll. “Can you put that in layman’s terms, Doctor?”
“I study the light spectrum.”
“Okay, and how did that help you with the clue?”
Farnsworth, now started, warmed to his subject. “The three-digit numbers inside the lines represent the electromagnetic waves, as expressed in terahertz, of the frequency interval of colors detectable by the human eye.”
Chen blinked, then spoke with exaggerated patience. “Doctor, most of our viewers don’t study light. Could you say it more directly?”
Farnsworth thought a moment. “Each number represents a shade of color.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Chen smiled, apparently finished with the scientist’s technobabble and ready to drop her bombshell on a waiting audience. “We used Dr. Farnsworth’s findings to fill in the spaces on the diagram,” she said, facing the audience again as the split screen went momentarily dark. “Here’s what the picture reveals.”
Nina leaned forward along with the rest of her team as the stylized image of a bright orange-red bird against a backdrop of blue and green filled the screen. Yellow flames blazed out from its wings and tail feathers.
“Looks like a phoenix bird to me,” Chen said, turning to Shawna. “Retired Executive Assistant Director Jackson is close to Nina Guerrera and has been in touch with the team from Quantico. What do they think about the picture?”